The Insect Hotel: An Urban Habitat For Bugs

Recently, the city of London and British real estate company British Land held an architecture competition called Beyond the Hive for artists to come up with designs for urban habitats for insect species. The winning design was architecture firm Arup Associates’ “The Insect Hotel”, a structure based on the Voronoi pattern, containing a series of compartments. A variety of material such as soil and deadfall, based on the individual needs of various insects, can be inserted into these compartments. The top of the Insect Hotel is designed to absorb rain water through planting while the sides allow easy access to butterflies and moths.